Trade, falling consumption in 2025

Consumption down by 1.4%. This is the drop recorded in 2025 by the Confimprese-Jakala Consumption Observatory, which highlights the weakness of consumption in a context held back by the climate of uncertainty caused by geopolitics. The hardest hit sector is entertainment and leisure, which records -4.4%, followed by clothing and accessories (-2.1%) and other retail (-1.3%), while personal care is bucking the trend with +2.9%. The contraction hit shops in shopping streets and historical centres hard (-2.3%), while things went better for shopping centres (-0.3%) and proximity shops, which lost half a point.

In addition to the downturn in retail consumption, certain categories in particular suffer from the continuous promotions offered 52 weeks a year. In addition to these, there are seasonal events such as spring, Easter, Black friday without forgetting below cost, pre-sales and personal offers. In other words, today the typical customer chooses the brand, the product and waits for the moment of the offer. "The end of the year at -1.4% in value," explains Mario Maiocchi, director of the Confimprese study centre, "shows a varied reality depending on the business sectors, with personal care in the positive at +2.9% and greater difficulty in the clothing-accessories sectors at -2.1% and entertainment at -4.4%. A smaller negative for catering at -0.6% and other retail at -1.3%. A non-positive picture overall, therefore, with fairly moderate sectoral variations. It will now be important to monitor the first few months of 2026, which have fairly moderate counterfactuals and could therefore indicate a stabilisation of consumption at levels close to those of last year".

In the negative field other retail, which includes home furnishing, electronics, telephony, books, personal care, and services shops with -1.3%, which however shows a varied reality depending on the segments with personal care at +2.9% and entertainment at -4.4%. Catering remained at a more moderate loss, closing at -0.6%. Clothing and footwear were a little more complex, as they 'lived' on a rollercoaster ride in 2025, with a November (+4.7%) that had raised hopes of a more substantial recovery in sales.

Among the regions, Valle D'Aosta is the one that sees a +1.4% increase in consumption, while neighbouring Piedmont shows the most marked slowdown at -2.7%. In the provincial cities, Fermo was the best at +3.5%, Sondrio the tail-end at -3.0%.